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abrabam Xincoln 



HON. FREDERICK A. SMITH 



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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



ADDRESS 

BY 

FREDERICK W. LEHMANN 

OF ST. LOUIS 



AT MEMORIAL HALL 



Chicago. February Twelfth 
1908 






PRESS OF 

UMBDENSTOCK-FRISKEY-PORTER CO. 

CHICAGO 






^bmltam ^intnln 



In considering the career of a man like Abra- 
ham Lincoln, we are disposed to view the end 
from the beginning, and to see the President of 
the United States and the great Emancipator in 
the young lawyer and politician exercising and 
developing his talents in the courts and on the 
hustings of primitive Illinois ; in the boy growing 
to manhood in the backwoods of Indiana, and 
even in the child of the lowly Kentucky home. 
But the future was a sealed book for him, as 
much as for any of his fellows, and unfolded 
to him no more of promise than to them. He 
rose to distinction by slow degrees, and his life 
had drawn near to its close before it became visi- 
ble to any that he was destined to perform a 
great and peculiar part in the world's work. 

Thomas Ford died in the year 1850, leaving in 
manuscript a history of Illinois, which was pub- 
lished a few years later. Ford had been Gov- 
ernor of Illinois, a resident of the State for many 
years, and a constant attendant upon its legisla- 
tive sessions. He believed himself to be ac- 



quainted not only with events and results, but 
as well ''with the characters and motives of those 
who were most active in bringing them about." 
He was an impartial critic, as, in dealing with 
Whig or Democrat, he was alike sparing of his 
praise, and unsparing of his censure. Had Lin- 
coln died when this history was written, we 
should have known of him only what its pages 
record. They present him as a member of the 
legislature in 1836, one of the delegation from 
Sangamon County, known, because of their 
stature, as ''the long nine." Ford could see in 
them nothing but "dexterous jugglers and mana- 
gers in politics," whose one purpose was to re- 
move the capitol to Springfield, to accomplish 
which they log-rolled on every pending measure, 
and so made themselves more responsible than 
any others for the scheme of internal improve- 
ment entered upon that year. Douglas was a 
member of the same legislature, and went with 
the majority, it being the aim of men like him- 
self and Lincoln "just to keep along even with 
the humor of the people, right or wrong." The 
scheme of internal improvement proved almost 
immediately to be a disastrous failure, but those 
who had supported it suffered nothing in public 
favor, many of them being subsequently elected 
to higher offices, Lincoln being twice thereafter 
re-elected to the Legislature, and later sent to 



Congress, and Douglas three limes elected to 
Congress, and then to the United States Senate. 
In the opinion of Governor Ford, these men were 
all "spared monuments of popular wrath, evinc- 
ing how safe it is to a politician, but how disas- 
trous it may be to the country, to keep along 
with the present fervor of the people." 

Not a flattering picture this, but there is in it 
much of truth. Douglas and Lincoln were both 
of them politicians of a practical type, and as 
such, must keep along even with the humor of 
the people, but the portrayal as to Lincoln cer- 
tainly is unjust, because it does not disclose the 
whole truth. Douglas, as to the great question 
with which they became identified, declared that 
he did not care whether the people voted it up or 
voted it down, but Lincoln did care, and so, while 
he might remain with the people even when they 
were not abreast of his own convictions, it was 
with the hope and the purpose to bring them to 
the right, and in the faith that he could guide 
them better when with them than when away 
from them. Hov/ much this -meant had not 
become apparent when Governor Ford died. The 
work which Lincoln was appointed to do was 
preparing, but the time appointed for doing it 
had not yet come. 

The story of slavery in America begins with 
the first chapter of its history. The people of 



the North were no more averse to it than those 
of the South, but climatic and economic condi- 
tions were unfavorable at the North, and from 
the beginning of the Revolutionary war the insti- 
tution declined in that section, lingering longest 
in New Jersey, where the last relic of it passed 
away in i860. 

At the South, clim.atic conditions from the 
first, and later economic conditions, favored its 
growth, but it was viewed, none the less, with 
grave apprehension by many Southern states- 
men. Thomas Jefferson was conspicuous for his 
efforts against it, although he was himself a 
slaveholder. In his "Summary View" of the 
case of the colonists against the mother country, 
he arraigned the British King for his veto of 
colonial enactments against the slave-trade, and 
he repeated this in elaborate form in the first 
draft of the Declaration of Independence, but 
omitted it from the reported form out of defer- 
ence to some of his Southern colleagues. 

In 1784, in the ordinance introduced by him 
for the government of the Western Territory, he 
provided that after the year 1800, in the States 
to be formed from this territory, there should 
be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude ex- 
cept as a punishment for crime. It required the 
vote of seven States to carry the proposition. 
Six States voted for it and three against it, one, 

8 



North Carolina, was divided, New Jersey, be- 
cause of the sickness of one of its delegates, lost 
its vote, and two States had no delegates present. 
New Jersey, had its sick member attended, would 
have voted for the provision, and the change of a 
single vote in either the Virginia or North Caro- 
lina delegation, would have carried the State for 
it. It is doubtful if ever before, or since, so 
much of weal or woe was dependent upon the 
vote of one man. Had Jefferson's plan prevailed, 
slavery, by being confined to the Southern At- 
lantic States, would have been placed in the sure 
course of peaceable extinction, but this was not 
to be. 

The efforts of Jefferson, however, were not en- 
tirely barren of results. Three years later Nathan 
Dane brought forward an ordinance for the gov- 
ernment of the Northwestern Territory, being 
all the country lying North of the Ohio river, 
and he had incorporated in this Jefferson's pro- 
vision against slavery, making it, however, imme- 
diately effective. Eight States were present, three 
from the North and five from the South, and the 
provision now received the unanimous vote of 
the States, and the vote of every individual dele- 
gate as well, save one, and this perverse spirit 
was not from the South, but from the North. 

Taken together, these ordinances of 1784 and 
1787 constitute a compromise, by which Mason 
9 



and Dixon's line as the boundary between free- 
dom and slavery was extended along the Ohio 
river to the Western border of the Nation. 

While the last Continental Congress was in 
session, the Federal Convention was engaged in 
the work of framing a Constitution under which 
the people of the United States were to be or- 
ganized as a Nation. What was done in this 
Convention was, of necessity, by common con- 
sent. The institution of slavery must be taken 
into account, and in a manner satisfactory to its 
friends. There was an abolition sentiment in the 
South, not well defined as to plan, but certainly 
regretting the existence of slavery, and hoping 
that in some way, and without too much of sac- 
rifice, it would pass away. This, beyond a doubt, 
had its restraining influence upon the friends of 
the institution, and helped to moderate their de- 
mands. Only three provisions of the Constitu- 
tion had reference to slavery. In the enumera- 
tion for purposes of representation in Congress 
and of direct taxation, a slave was to be counted 
as three-fifths of a person; the slave trade was 
protected against National interference, except 
by way of a head tax not exceeding ten dollars, 
until the year 1808; and fugitive slaves were to 
be delivered to their owners on demand. The 
words ''slave" and "slavery" were, however, not 
to be found in the Constitution. The slave was 



always a "person" ; in the fugitive slave clause he 
was ''a person held to service or labor in a State 
under the laws thereof." The framers knew 
what they were doing, and most of them were 
ashamed of it, but some compromise Vv^as neces- 
sary, or the Union could not be formed. 

And now for a time there was quiet on the 
subject. Colonization societies, South as well as 
North, proposed in an amiable and harmless sort 
of way, the deportation of free negroes to Africa, 
and the encouragement of emancipation by the act 
of individual owners. But during this period of 
quiet events were happening in another field, 
which changed completely the attitude of the 
South toward its peculiar institution. English 
inventions made at intervals from 1775 to 1788 
gave an enormous stimulus to the m.anufacture 
of cotton fabrics in that country and a cor- 
responding demand for the raw material which 
the fields of the South were well adapted to 
supply. Very little, however, was being shipped, 
as a slave could fit but five or six pounds a day 
for the market. The export of cotton in 1792 
was less than 140,000 pounds. In 1793, Eli 
Whitney, a Yankee school teacher, then living in 
Georgia, invented the saw-gin, which enabled a 
slave to clean a thousand pounds of cotton per 
day. The exports of cotton increased at once, 
rising to nearly a half million pounds in that 



year, and more than six million two years there- 
after, and so it continued, until, in 1859, it was 
nearly 1,400,000,000 pounds. Here, now, was a 
simple tillage from which the ambition of free 
labor turned, and in which slave labor could be 
employed with great profit. "The plainest print," 
said Lincoln, in one of his speeches, ''cannot be 
read through a gold eagle." The evils of slav- 
ery were no longer visible to those interested in 
it, and the relation of master was discovered to 
be one of duty, w^hich had its sanctions in the 
Bible itself, and hereafter the institution was not 
content simply to wear out an inane existence 
where it chanced to be, but, inspired by its new 
life and vigor, claimed the right to establish itself 
in any territory of the United States not already 
occupied as the domain of a free State. It was 
now not to be excused, but to be justified; not to 
be restricted, but to be extended widely as its 
needs might demand. 

The first direct contest within the Union was 
over the admission of Missouri as a State, and 
this resulted in the Compromise of 1820, by 
which the parallel of 36^ 30' w^as established as 
a line north of which slavery should not extend, 
excepting, however, the State of Missouri itself, 
which save a small projection at the Southeast, 
lay entirely North of this parallel. Slavery ac- 
quired another State, while Freedom got a prom- 

13 



ise, but a promise of great value if kept. But 
neither the friends nor the opponents of slav- 
ery were satisfied with the results, and the con- 
troversy between them was renewed with greater 
bitterness than ever in connection with the Mexi- 
can Vv^ar. The Wilrnot Proviso, which was sim- 
ply the anti-slavery clause of the ordinance of 
1787, was insisted upon by the opponents of 
slavery as a condition of acquiring any territory 
from Mexico, but it failed of adoption. Never- 
theless, California, tlie hrst State to be carved 
from the new acquisition, presented itself for 
admission with a free Constitution. Another 
compromise was necessary, and Kenry Clay, who 
had arranged that of 1820, came forvv^ard to 
make a new and lasting one in 1850. His plan 
v/as expressed in a series of eight resolutions, 
the important provisions of v/hich were the ad- 
mission of California, the organization of terri- 
tories in the rest of the Mexican annexation 
without reference to slavery, non-interference 
with slavery where it existed and with the inter- 
state slave trade, and a more efficient fugitive 
slave law. The proposed m.easures were adopted, 
and seemed for the tim.e so satisfactory that both 
Whigs and Democrats in their National plat- 
forms of 1852, declared them to be the final solu- 
tion of the controversy. 

Only two years passed after this expression 

13 



of general approval, when the controversy was 
reopened by the Kansas-Nebraska bill, which 
proposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
as in conflict with that of 1850, because it failed 
to recognize the principle of non-intervention by 
Congress in the matter of slavery in the Terri- 
tories. Thereafter, the people of each Territory 
were to determine this for themselves, and upon 
their action would depend whether it should be 
dedicated to slavery or to freedom. This bill, 
supported by all the power and patronage of the 
administration, was enacted into law. Three 
years later followed the decision in the Dred 
Scott case, which, going beyond the principle of 
the Kansas-Nebraska bill, held that even the peo- 
ple of the Territor}^ could not, prior to its organi- 
zation and admission as a State, exclude slavery 
from their midst. The barriers now were all 
down. Every restriction as to new territory had 
failed. The recognition of slavery as a rightful 
institution, fostered by the Constitution and enti- 
tled to all the sanctions of the law, was declared 
to be the indispensable condition of the main- 
tenance of the Union. 

Every variety of opinion had come to exist 
among our people. Some were for freedom, 
regardless of the Union, and some in the same 
way were for slavery. Some were for the Union, 
regardless of slavery or freedom. Some hoped 



for a Union with slavery as a permanent institu- 
tion, and some for a Union in which universal 
freedom, if not a present blessing, would be, 
at least, an assured, albeit a distant, hope and 
prospect. 

As the Nation was nearing this last great 
crisis, Abraham Lincoln appeared among the 
forces of Union and Freedom ,and to him they 
turned more and more for guidance and leader- 
ship. And who was he that he should attempt 
the accomplishment of a work which so often 
throughout the life of the Nation its greatest 
statesman had undertaken, and had failed to do ? 

He was an American, in Vv^hose veins blended the 
blood of the North and the South. He was born 
to the hardships and privations of pioneer civili- 
zation, and suffered and sustained them through- 
out his youth, and well into manhood. Educa- 
tion, so far as schools afforded it, did but little 
for him, but he learned well the lessons of self- 
help and self-reliance, which the isolation of the 
backwoods enforced upon its people. But neither 
in his ancestry nor in his surroundings, was he 
singular. There were many men of his time 
whose heredity and environment were essentially 
like his own. What, then, made him the man 
he was? We can answer this question when we 
can answer why, among all the Englishmen of his 
day, there was but one Shakespeare, and why. 



in a later generation of Scotchmen, there was bnt 
one Burns. That which distinguishes a man 
am.ong his neighbors, that in which he differs 
from those who were born and bred as he was, is 
too subtle for determination by human analysis. 
It discloses itself as he develops with the years, 
but it is not the product of the years. We say 
it v/as born with the man, and we see that it 
was not born with his brother. Something rna)^ 
be bred into the bone, and something may be 
trained into the flesh, but neither breeding nor 
training, nor both of them, explain for us the 
master spirits of the world. Heredity, and en- 
vironment are the two parts of a common mold 
in which the cla}^ of liumanity is cast, but it 
must be that beyond these there is, now and 
then, at the interval of many years, the touch 
and impress of the creative hand itself, impart- 
ing something of the divine spark we call genius. 
V/hat was Lincoln's great quality? He had 
none. His greatness consisted in the possession 
of simple qualiiies in great measure. It was 
just this that fitted him for the patient leader- 
ship required by the times. The people always 
held him to be one of themselves, because of 
the homeliness of his character. He was sim- 
ple in manner, plain in speech, gentle in conduct, 
kind in feeling, sincere in purpose, honest in 
thought, and charitable in judgment. These 

16 



qualities inspired personal fondness and affec- 
tion, and established a familiarity of relation 
with the public which was maintained to the last 
day of his life. The abolitionist who pilloried 
him as a slavehound, knew him as Httle as did 
the slaveowner who stigmatized him as a "nigger 
thief." His mental view was clarified by his 
kindness of feeling and honesty of thought. In 
the Babel of contradictions which prevailed — 
he saw the right and the wrong of every side. 
There was past fault in the North to temper the 
present wrong of the South, and there were 
problems to follow universal emancipation which 
he was not anxious to precipitate. He could 
accurately estimate the difficulties of the situation, 
and as accurately his ability to deal with them. 
He spoke as a strong man when he said at Peoria 
that "if all earthly power were given me, I should 
not know what to do as to the existing institu- 
tion." 

There were many upon his side of the great 
conflict more aggressive than he. Had they the 
power, they would abolish slavery at once, and 
leave the consequences to God. This skulking 
behind Providence in great emergencies was an 
easy conception of duty which never commended 
itself to Lincoln. He hoped for guidance from 
on high, and by the light given, not by that with- 
held, was he to direct his feet. He held himself 

17 



justly to be as responsible for the consequences 
of his acts as for the acts themselves. So far 
as the kindly light shed its radiance, he moved 
with perfect courage and v^ith assured confi- 
dence. It gave him to see always that slavery 
was wrong, that however inferior the negro 
might be .to him in physical or intellectual en- 
dowment, in the right to eat the bread his toil 
had earned, he was the equal of himself or of 
Douglas, or of any other man. The Decla- 
ration of Independence asserted for him, not the 
equality of all men in all things, for this was 
manifestly not the fact, but it did assert the equal 
right of all men, black as well as white, to life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Full recog- 
nition of this in all our laws and throughout all 
the land was apparently impossible to be at- 
tained at once, but the direction of movement 
must always be toward this, and there must be 
no yielding of any ground once gained. He 
knew that however just it might be as between 
the border ruffian and the jayhawker to deter- 
mine by stuffed ballot or by bullet fired from 
ambush, whether Kansas should admit or exclude 
slavery, neither ballot nor bullet could make slav- 
ery right, and he would have none of a popular 
sovereignty in which the person most interested 
had no voice. Men thought him weak, because 
in so many things he was complaisant, but they 



found that when the depths of his nature wer. 
stirred and his convictions aroused, he was abso- 
kitely self-reUant and indomitable in his pur- 
pose, and proved himself, not the creature, but 
the master, of circumstance. 

The depressing conditions of his early life im- 
bued him with sadness and melancholy, but the 
gloom of these was lightened by that humor 
which is so close akin to pathos. That he was 
given to telling stories, and that these had some- 
times the smell of the barnyard, but never the 
odor of the brothel, we must believe, for the tra- 
ditions are too insistent for dispute, but he was 
not the people's jester, as some who did not know 
himx were disposed to believe. The man who once 
puts on the cap and bells cannot doff them, as 
more than one in our public life has found, to 
his cost. It was the earnestness of his nature, 
the seriousness of his purpose, which impressed 
the nation, for men never followed a clown or 
buffoon through fire and blood, as they followed 
him. Had he been lightminded, he would have 
broken under the burdens of his lot. Great 
strength of will was requisite to acquire the edu- 
cation he got, in spite of the invidious bars 
against him. A few months of school, the Bible, 
Aesop, Shakespeare, Bunyan and Burns, and 
what was the result? The highest culture to be 
found in the political literature of America. And 

19 



he knew his power. No man could express his 
thoughts for him. Ambitious young reporters in 
the West attempted it, but with kindly hand he 
put their paraphrase aside and held to his own 
words. The scholar of his party in the East ad- 
vised eliminating, as in bad taste, the closing 
words of the first inaugural, but his judgment of 
their propriety was not shaken. Read his public 
letters, papers and addresses. They are pro- 
foundly serious. A gleam of humor, very sel- 
dom an anecdote, and when occurring brought 
at once to its point ; nothing coarse, with but one 
exception, and this apololgized for in the speech 
itself; rarely quotations from others, and always 
brief when his own ideas are to be expressed, 
and throughout, a simple, strong statement of his 
meaning in the purest, cleanest Saxon English 
to be found outside the Bible, and, in some of 
its strains, as in the second inaugural, rising to 
the loftiest ranges of the Bible itself. 

He accepted leadership when it was proffered, 
and he did not hesitate to assert it when he be- 
lieved it to be his due. "Do you suppose," he 
wrote to Herndon, in 1848, "that I should ever 
have got into notice if I had waited to be hunted 
up and pushed forward by older men?'' As a 
boy growing up to manhood he was the leader 
of his household, leading through his service, 
finding nothing that needed to be done too menial 
20 



or too arduous for his undertaking. He was 
the leader in the rough sports and games of 
his young companions in Indiana and IlHnois, 
and in the Black Hawk war he was chosen by his 
comrades to be the captain of his Company. 
Offering himself upon his return from a cam- 
paign which afforded no opportunity for glory, 
as a candidate for the Legislature, although fail- 
ing of election, he yet secured a large majority 
of the votes, so far as he had been able to make 
himself known. Elected thereafter four times to 
the Assembly, he soon secured a position of com- 
mand, and was more than once the choice of his 
party for speaker. Repeatedly he was the nomi- 
nee of his party as Presidential elector. He 
proved his capacity more and more with the 
passing years. Douglas in the first debate of 
1858, speaking in all sincerity, said, "Lincoln is 
one of those peculiar men who perform with 
admirable skill everything which they under- 
take." He demonstrated this in his career as a 
lawyer. In the field of practice which he chose 
for himself, he was conspicuously successful. 
In the matter of income, indeed, he was sur- 
passed by many of his contemporaries, for his 
own pecuniary interest in his business was for 
him its least attractive feature. He cherished 
high ideals of his calling. The law to him was 
the ministry of justice. In the present day voca- 



tioii of advising how the mandates of the law 
may be evaded without incurring its penahies, 
he would have made a sorry showing. His abili- 
ties displayed themselves at their best in the 
open contests of the courtroom, when human 
rights were involved. He was a trial lawyer 
with skill to follow the truth through a tangled 
mass of testimony, and an advocate with power 
to enforce upon others the convictions of his own 
mind. 

To the Nation at large, he seemed, in 1858, to 
emerge suddenly and unexpectedly from a pro- 
found obscurity to oppose the brilliant Demo- 
cratic leader whose audacious turn against the 
administration of his own party upon the issue 
of the Lecompton Constitution had made many 
Republicans wonder if here was not the pilot to 
steer them safely between the Scylla of abolition- 
ism and the Charybdis of perpetual slavery. But 
in Illinois he had been for years, and naturally, 
the opponent of Douglas. He was engaged with 
him in 1854 on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and 
had won a victory, the fruits of which, that they 
might not be lost to the cause, he permitted an- 
other to enjoy. In 1858 he showed that the issue 
upon the Lecompton Constitution was one of 
fact, whose solution one way or the other, left 
unsettled the great question whether slavery 
should be restricted or whether it should be left 



free to extend itself. He felt himself to be the 
man for the emergency, and responded promtply 
to the call, and as he entered the lists he sounded 
the challenge he had pondered long and deeply, 
**a house divided against itself cannot stand," 
and with it he inspired more of fear among his 
followers than among his foes. But whatever 
others thought, for him the hour had struck ; the 
power of slavery had increased, was increasing, 
and must be diminished. Compromise had ex- 
erted all its artifices in vain — it was now sur- 
render or fight. He had missed the fruits of 
victory in 1854, and now, his friends said, he 
would miss the victory itself — but no matter. 
He looked beyond, and to a larger field, and 
whatever might betide, he would clear the way 
for victory there. After a contest of debate, 
matchless in history for the importance of its 
subject and the skill of its conduct, he was over- 
thrown, and rose from the dust of deafeat, no 
longer the leader of his party in his province, 
but the leader of a great people in their highest 
aspiration and most heroic endeavor. 

The fundamental proposition presented by 
Douglas was that slavery was an institution to be 
dealt with by the white people of the countrty 
as they saw fit. The fundamental proposition 
presented by Mr. Lincoln was that the institu- 
tion was inherently wrong, and was to be dealt 

23 



with in that view, and that no agreement among 
the whites could rightfully make slaves of the 
blacks. Upon this proposition Lincoln was 
nominated for the Presidency in i860, and all 
who agreed with it gathered earnestly and en- 
thusiastically to his support. Among his oppo- 
nents, however, there was great division. Doug- 
las, nominated by the Northern Democrats, re- 
asserted his doctrine of popular sovereignty, 
qualified by a declaration of submission to the 
decisions of the Supreme Court upon the sub- 
ject, whatever they might be; Breckenridge, put 
forward by the Southern Democracy, asserted 
the rightfulness of slavery, and demanded for it 
the full protection and support of the govern- 
ment; while John Bell, of Tennessee, repre- 
sented a large body of respectable gentlemen, 
some of whom thought slavery was right, and 
others of whom thought it was wrong, but all 
of whom agreed that the existing troubles came 
from talking about it, and so they presented a 
platform of "keep still and do nothing," antici- 
pating the opinion so generally inculcated at the 
present time that quite as much harm may be 
done by preaching the ten commandments as by 
violating them. 

With such dissension among his opponents, 
the election of Lincoln was a foregone conclu- 
sion, but by a minority and a sectional vote. He 



carried ever}^ Northern State except New Jer- 
sey, and there he got four electoral votes, se- 
curing altogether i8o out of a total of 303, a 
majority of 57 over all. Douglas got the remain- 
ing three votes of New Jersey, and the nine votes 
from Missouri. Bell carried the States of Vir- 
ghiia, Tennessee and Kentucky, with 39 votes, 
and Breckenridge carried all the Southern States 
and the border States of Delaware and Mary- 
land, giving him 72 votes. The total popular vote, 
not including that of South Carolina, whose elec- 
tors were chosen by the Legislature, was 4,680,- 
193. Of these Lincoln had 1,866,452, Douglas 
1,375,157, Breckenridge 847,953, which the vote 
of South Carolina would swell to above 900,000, 
and Bell had 590,631. Douglas, second before 
the people, was the lowest in the electoral col- 
lege. Had the opposition vote been combined 
upon one candidate, Lincoln would still have been 
elected, for the combination would have taken 
from, him only the four votes from New Jersey, 
four from. California and three from Ore^ n, 
leaving him 169 against 134. In the hve border 
States, Lincoln secured but 26430 votes, and in 
the Southern States not a single vote wast cast 
for him. Douglas, Breckenridge and Bell all 
received votes in the border and the Northern 
States, and in such numbers that, omitting from 
the count all of the Southern States and Vir- 



25 



ginia, Lincoln failed by 46,000 of getting a 
majority of the popular vote. It was a divided 
North, with the majority against slavery, against 
a practically united South in favor of slavery. 

An ominous result. Defeat in 1858 spelled 
victory, and now in i860 victory seemed to spell 
defeat. Four months intervened between the 
election of Lincoln and his inauguration, and 
during that time he could do nothing. The gov- 
ernment was in weak, if not hostile hands. State 
after State seceded and put itself in preparation 
for defense against any attempt to hold it in the 
Union. The arms, the arsenals, the forts of the 
Nation, were seized, and not a hand was lifted 
to hinder. Slavery had decreed the dissolution 
of the Union, and was putting its decree into 
effect. The South showed energy, determina- 
tion and united action. In the North there was 
hesitation, apprehension, division, distraction, 
even among those who had supported Lincoln. 
Peace, and at any price, was demanded. More 
compromises were proposed, the surrender of 
everything that had been gained at the election, 
even consent to secession. Thurlow Weed de- 
clared that "a victorious party can afford to be 
tolerant." The New York Herald said that coer- 
cion was out of the question. General Scott 
suggested a division of the country into four con- 
federacies. Greeley begged that the erring sis- 

26 



ters be permitted to go in peace. William Lloyd 
Garrison said that the people of the North should 
recognize the fact that "THE UNION IS DIS- 
SOLVED." And much more there was of the 
same kind, and worse, if worse could be, and 
to deal with it all, a country lawyer, without 
military training, without experience in admin- 
istration, and whose most distinguished official 
service had been one undistinguished term in 
Congress. 

He bade farewell to his friends at Springfield 
in words suggesting a foreboding that he would 
never return. He went ''to assume a task more 
difficult than that which devolved upon General 
Washington." His trust for its performance was 
in the people. Upon them depended the salva- 
tion of the Union, and upon them depended the 
preservation of what had been gained for free- 
dom by his election. He was willing to secure 
the Southern States in what he believed were 
their rights under the Constitution, and by 
amendments to express in that instrument what 
he believed to be implied therein. Beyond this, 
he would not go. He would not consent to dis- 
union, and he would not renounce the aiithority 
of the general government over the territories. 
But to maintain the Union under the existing 
conditions, the people of the Northern States 
must be united, and the border States of Mary- 

27 



land, Kentucky and Alissouri must be held to 
their National allegiance. For this difficult task 
Lincoln was supremely fitted. He knew how to 
keep along witli the present humor of the people, 
and to warm it with something of his own fervor. 
The cause of the war, as we all see it now, was 
slavery, but while the South was organizing to 
fight for its preservation, the North, as yet, was 
unvviiling to fight for its destruction. War, from 
the standpoint of the Northern people, must be 
v/aged, if at all, for the Union and the Constitu- 
tion, for the Union of all the States, with the 
rights of all of them unimpaired. And so, after 
his inauguration, Lincoln moved slowly. He 
would, if he could, retake the property of the 
Nation which had been seized. He would de- 
fend that which still remained in charge of tlie 
Nation's representatives. He would not, for the 
I)resent, attempt by force to exercise the func- 
tions of the government Vv^here they v/ould be 
resisted. He was not matched by equal pa- 
tience. The South was in no temper for a v\^ait- 
ing game. Sumter vv^as fired upon, and the nag 
brought down. The patriotism of the North 
vv'as kindled to flamie by this act of aggression, 
and now, laying aside their indifference and 
abandoning their fears, the people joined in the 
war for the Union. 

The story of Lincoln's life during the four 



years that followed, is the story of a Nation's 
great travail, and cannot be recounted here. 
Through it all, he had need of his patience and 
gentleness, and his clear, direct insight into popu- 
lar feeling. The quality that made him ''Father 
Abraham" held him even with the people, and 
held them even with him. Cabinet officers pro- 
posed to determine for him the policy of his ad- 
ministration, and to carry it out, and Generals 
proposed to construct or reconstruct his cabinet, 
distinguished citizens were ready with criticisms 
of the man who moved either too fast or too 
slow. The great men of the country were long 
in coming to an appreciation of him. His pro- 
foundest policy seemed to them often to be rus- 
tic ignorance and incapacity. There was a 
patronizing quality in their interference, which 
must have been very offensive to a nature sensi- 
tive as his, but he never complained. Referring 
in a letter to some newspaper comments, in No- 
vember, 1863, he said, "They constitute a fair 
specimen of what has occurred to me through 
life. I have endured a great deal of ridicule 
without much malice, and have received a great 
deal of kindness not quite free from ridicule. 
I am used to it." Slaveowners, of real or pro- 
fessed Union sentiments, complained of interfer- 
ence by the army with their institution; political 
generals embarrassed him by unauthorized procla- 

29 



mations of emancipation. But he held, as he 
wrote to Greeley, to his paramount object, which 
was to save the Union, and was not either to 
save or destroy slavery, intending ''no modifica- 
tion of my oft-expressed personal wish that all 
mxcn, everywhere, could be free." Disasters gath- 
ered thick upon the fields of battle, and the tide 
of public feeling seemed at times to turn against 
him, but he lost neither heart nor hope, nor 
even his temper, and when, in the worst period 
of the war, instead of giving helpful suggestions, 
Carl Schurz heaped blame upon his head, he 
answered with nothing more severe than that 
there are men who ''think you are performing 
your part as poorly as you think I am performing 
mine." His office made him commander-in-chief 
of the armies, and his letters show how diligent 
he was in his duties, and how fully and seriously 
he bore all the responsibilities of the position. 
Especially was this true in the relation which the 
States bore to the war. His letters to the Gov- 
ernors are always vigorous and pointed. When 
Governor Andrew explained delay in forwarding 
regiments because he could not get quick work 
out of the disbursing officer and the paymaster, 
he answered, "Please say to those gentlemen 
that if they do not work quickly, I will make 
quick work with them." Office seekers pressed 
upon him in the midst of his sorest troubles; he 

20 



was harassed at every turn by ambitious men 
whose chief desire was their own distinction, and 
unscrupulous men who gather to a war as vul- 
tures to a carcass. And v/ith all he was patient 
and gentle and just. To his lot it fell, and grate- 
ful this was to his nature, to mitigate the cruel 
justice of the court-martial. A soldier, a mere 
boy, had fallen asleep at his post, or, seduced 
by seditious arguments from friends at home, 
had deserted. The appeal for mercy from father 
or mother never fell upon unheeding ears. The 
message went out, ''Let execution be suspended 
until further orders from me," and the further 
orders were never sent. 

The one policy of Lincoln's administration 
most distinctively his own, was that relating to 
emancipation, and it was the m.ost difficult of all 
to deal with. Here he was continually pressed 
in contrary directions by friends, whose support 
was indispensable to him. That slavery was in 
some way the real cause of the war, was felt 
by everybody. Yet the war must not be waged 
to destroy slavery, and slavery must not survive 
a war of which it was the cause. The border 
States upheld the institution, and many men 
throughout the North were unv/illing to fight for 
the freedom of the negro, and at the same time 
the number of those in favor of abolition was 
constantly increasing. Lincoln proposed a mid- 
31 



die course of compensated emancipation, but 
even this could not reconcile the opposing fac- 
tions. This course was, as much as any other, 
destructive of slavery, and the men who would 
not fight for the freedom of the negro were al- 
most as unwilling to pay for it. The abolition- 
ists, on the other hand, would consent to nothing 
that recognized any element of justice or right on 
the side of the slaveowner. Emerson voiced the 
feeling of these men at a meeting held in Music 
Hall on January ist, 1863, to celebrate the is- 
suance of the Emancipation Proclamation : 
'Tay ransom to the owner. 

And fill the bag to the brim. 

Who is the owner ? The slave is owner. 

He always was. Pay him." 
Lincoln understood this quite as well as Emer- 
son, and in his second inaugural gave timely ex- 
pression to the sentiment in prose much loftier 
than Emerson's verse. He also understood that 
while the Constitution which had brought the 
North and South into union was unjust to the 
black men, whose bondage it sanctioned and con- 
tinued, it yet carried with it something of obliga- 
tion from the North to the South, and this obli- 
gation he was willing to rcognize to the utmost. 
His humanity prompted him to yield abstractions. 
He would not continue the sacrifice of life to a 
theory, if, by the expenditure of mere treasure, 



he could bring about the condition he desired. 
This view of the case he pressed upon the aboH- 
tionist, while to the border men he pointed out 
that slavery was doomed, even though it should 
survive the shock of war. Seeking to conciliate 
both sides, he seemed to both to be uncertain, 
hesitating and vacillating. Sir Walter Scott, in 
his Kenilworth, likens the mind of Queen Eliza- 
beth to one of the balanced rocks of the Druids. 
"The finger of Cupid, boy though he was painted, 
could set her feeilngs in motion, but the power of 
Hercules could not destroy their equilibrium." 
So Lincoln seemed to incline from the one side 
to the other of the conflicting forces about him, 
but easily as he responded to the pressure of any 
of them, there was not power enough in them to 
overthrow his balance. He had fixed his pur- 
pose upon the maintenance of the Union, and to 
this purpose any plan relative to slavery must 
be secondary. Unable to persuade the radicals 
of either side, he was yet able to hold them to 
his policy of waiting upon events. His course 
respecting slavery was not inspired by indiffer- 
ence to the institution. He wished for its ex- 
tinction as much as did Garrison and Phillips, 
and this, so far from concealing, he gave ex- 
pression to upon every appropriate occasion. 
But Garrison and Phillips were willing to dis- 
solve the Union when that would simply rid them 



of political connection with slavery, and leave 
the institution entrenched under the government 
formed by the Southern States. As so often 
happens, extremes were working to the same 
end — separation. The radicals of the North were 
opposed to the Union because it sanctioned slav- 
ery, and those of the South because it menaced 
the continuance of slavery. Lincoln was opposed 
to slavery, not in the Union, but everywhere. 
Nothing could be gained for freedom by casting 
off the slave States. More, much more, would 
be done by holding together. Against the peo- 
ple of the South he had no unkindly feeUng. 
They were not wholly and solely responsible for 
the situation. Long usage and interest had in- 
fluenced their judgments, just as a like usage 
and interest would have influenced the judg- 
ments of the people of the North. Restrict slav- 
ery, and time would work its abolition, and this 
great work of healing would be done sooner in 
association than apart. With this view that free- 
dom was to be realized through Union, he never 
shared in the bitterness of feeling engendered 
by the struggle over slavery, and to the last was 
willing to recognize and to perform the measure 
of justice which was due to the people of the 
South from their brethren of the North. The 
war fortunately ended in universal emancipation. 
Union and Freedom became the same cause ; the 



34 



one impossible of maintenance without the at- 
tainment of the other, but both might easily have 
been lost if the attempt to realize both had been 
m^ade too soon, and that they were not, human- 
ity owes to the wisdom, the patience and the gen- 
tleness of Abraham Lincoln. 

When a second time he was elected to the 
Presidency, the end was not yet, but it was near, 
and the prescience of victory sounded, though 
not exultantly, in the solemn tones of his in- 
augural address. The thirteenth amendment to 
the Constitution was approved by Congress, and 
was being ratified by State after State. It was 
the anti-slavery clause of the ordinance of 1787; 
it was the Wilmot Proviso for which he had 
voted forty-two times during his single term 
in Congress, not limited now to the Northwest 
Territory nor to the domain wrested from Mex- 
ico, but widely extended in its scope as the Union 
might have power. Events moved rapidly. The 
army of Virginia made its last stand, and he put 
the seal of his approval upon the wise terms 
offered for its surrender. The remaining armies 
of the South were breaking up from desertion, 
and their surrender was imminent. The final 
consummation of his work was at hand, but into 
the perfect fullness of it he was not to come. 

When the children of Israel had finished the 
period of their wandering and passed from the 



35 



land of Moab into the promised land of Canaan, 
Caleb and Joshua were at the head of the march- 
ing columns. But where was the man who had 
led them out of the bondage of Egypt, and had 
guided them through all the perils of the wilder- 
ness? "And Moses w^ent up from the plains of 
Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top 
of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the 
Lord showed him the land of Gilead unto Dan, 
and all Napthali, and the land of Ephraim., and 
all the land of Judah unto the utmost sea, and 
the south, and the plain of the Valley of Jericho, 
the city of palm trees, unto Zoar. And the Lord 
said unto him. This is the land which I sware 
unto Abraham, unto Isaac and unto Jacob, say- 
ing, I will give it unto thy seed ; I have caused 
thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not 
go over thither. So Moses, the servant of the 
Lord, died there in the land of Moab, accord- 
ing to the word of the Lord. * ''' "^ " And 
the children of Lsrael wept for Moses in the 
plains of Moab for thirty days. * * ^ * 
And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like 
unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." 




-^ip^^^^Z^ 



THE GRAND ARMY HALL 



MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION 



Lincoln Birthday Service 



IN MEMORIAL HALL 

On Wednesday, February the Twelfth 
Nineteen Hundred and Thirteen 

AT three o'clock P. M. 



Address by 
HON. FREDERICK A. SMITH 

Collected ctl. 



n 



OCT 30 »» 



^hhxts^ of ^nn. ^jfr^bmck ^. ^mttl| 



Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen : As often as the 
natal day of Abraham Lincoln comes around, we 
meet in a sober and reverent mood. Our memory 
of him walks apart, by itself, in paths of subdued re- 
flection, for *'he was a man of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief." He was a great burden-bearer for the 
nation. Its problems and trials were his, and he did 
not turn aside from them or avoid them. He asked 
himself the direct question, "Is this right? Is that 
right? Is slavery right? Is secession right?" And 
with him the answer in his own conscience was as di- 
rect as the question. 

He was not afraid of his own conclusions. When 
he found the line between right and wrong there was 
no layer of compromise, concealment and cowardice 
to obscure it. Whatever duty it involved was coura- 
geously recognized and assumed. He seemed to see 
the operation of the moral law, and he knew that it 
revenged itself on whomsoever violated it. And now, 
today, he calls this nation to the simplicity of moral 
candor in the problems before us, and commands us 
to have faith in the right, "as God shall give us to see 
the right," and to do it. 

When we meet on this day, it is not to think lightly, 
frivolously, but soberly and earnestly. No other mood 
or spirit is consonant with the occasion. May I then, 
for a few moments, assume to lead your thought 



along a line which it is no irreverence or assumption 
to say Lincoln, if he could return from that bourne 
from which, alas, the sages come not back to bring 
us wisdom, would suggest to us who bear the burden 
of today. 

There is a large class of our citizens which causes 
new anxiety to the thoughtful and observant. This 
uneasiness was voiced in the last December number 
of the Century Magazine. The writer, after refer- 
ring to Macaulay's disbelief in universal suffrage, 
says, that during the very years when voting by the 
mass of the citizens has been marching on to political 
supremacy, ''there has been coming in a new set of 
doubts or anxieties concerning the whole process." 
He advances the idea that if the ballot is sovereign, 
''care must be taken that it functions safely." "Grant- 
ed," he says, "that its decisions are conclusive, the 
more reason for seeing to it, that they are freely and 
clearly pronounced. If we are to listen to the voice 
of the people in their votes, nothing must be permit- 
ted to obstruct or confuse that utterance." After re- 
ferring to the progress of measures looking to the 
purity of the ballot box, he says "despite all those 
and the other advances, a distinctly new uneasiness 
about the whole process of voting has recently been 
making itself manifest. Many thoughtful citizens 
have been troubled by doubts, not whether it can be 
made freely representative of the popular will, not 
whether the citizen can freely cast a pure ballot, but 
whether he cares enough about it to cast any ballot 
at all." He then refers to figures showing that the 
number of votes is not increasing as fast as popula- 
tion, and further showing an increasing disinclination 
to make full exercise of the right of suffrage ; and 



concludes that it is a notorious fact that the number 
of registrations falls far below what it should be, and 
that the ballots finally cast and counted reveal a sur- 
prisingly large number of indilferents or stay-at- 
homes. 

In other words, comrades and friends, there is an 
ever increasing number of us, whose duty it is to ex- 
press our opinions and judgments in the ballot box, 
who neglect or refuse to do our duty. As one result, 
we have weak and corrupt men in office. The govern- 
ments of our large cities fail in every essential for 
which they were created. Law is violated with im- 
punity and thrust aside. Criminals commit their 
crimes boldly, and are virtually unhindered by the 
police. The only safe man on the streets is the bur- 
glar, the robber and the murderer. Men are hired by 
the leaders of labor unions to kill for a wage little 
more than is paid in business to a skilled mechanic 
for a day's work — so cheap and inconsequential is hu- 
man life, and so little do they fear the authorities. 
From the Atlantic to the Pacific, organizations of men 
conspire to wreck structures of every kind with dyna- 
mite, involving the murder of hundreds and thou- 
sands of people — not for higher wages, not for better 
conditions of labor, but for "the good of the union"; 
and our local governments have been powerless to de- 
tect or punish, except in two instances. All of the 
participants in the conspiracy are guilty of murder, 
and several of them have confessed to the conspiracy. 
Are they being prosecuted for their great crimes ? We 
all know that they are not. They have been prose- 
cuted by the general government for the statutory of- 
fense of transporting dynamite on passenger trains, 
for which a penalty of a fine and imprisonment is 
provided. 

9 



Are the acts of these officers repudiated by their 
unions? On the contrary, some of these officers have 
been re-elected to office in their unions, according to 
the public press. 

Is there not in all this — and much more that might 
be recited if time permitted — ground for saying that 
our local governments are inadequate, not properly 
officered, are breaking down, are drifting into the com- 
plete control of the criminal classes in our large cities ? 
How long shall we permit these things to be? What 
do you think of a government which permits such 
things to be, and suffers the criminals to go unpun- 
ished, nay, does not put forth any efforts to punish 
the guilty ones? 

But, comrades and friends, our public officers are 
not the only ones to be blamed for this state of af- 
fairs. What do you think of our good citizens, lead- 
ing citizens, who when perpetrators of the most brutal 
and dastardly crimes are apprehended, tried and con- 
victed, immediately set on foot movements for par- 
dons and for modifications of sentences, so that the 
criminals may be set free again to prey upon the com- 
munity? What do you think of the sickly sentimen- 
tality against punishment for crime, which prompts 
such proceedings on the part of our good citizens, thus 
paralyzing and nullifying all efforts to detect and pun- 
ish criminals? 

The reformation of criminals is beautiful and 
charitable ; but the protection of society should be the 
first and the important consideration. To save our 
government and society from these enemies should 
be our first duty. After that you may reform the 
criminals, if you can ; but let me say to you, in all 
seriousness, as the result of long observation, you 

10 



must look elsewhere for your good citizens. You 
must look to the boys and young men who have spent 
more days at school and in good honest work than 
they have in the saloons. 

I have suggested certain specific problems. I might 
enumerate more, if time permitted. I will close this 
branch of my remarks with this general observation : 
There never was a time in the world's history when 
humanity was confronted with so many vital and 
pressing questions as it is today. They cannot be 
solved by handing them over to politicians, who are 
running for office, and are using their utmost inge- 
nuity to catch votes by proposing this or that vote- 
getting proposition to aid them in their immediate 
purposes. The solution must come from an entirely 
different class of people, whose motives cannot be 
questioned and who have no purpose or interest to 
serve other than the public good. The solution must 
be thought out by a sufficiently large body of our citi- 
zens to command attention and to convert a majority 
of the people. This means that every good citizen 
must realize his responsibility and discharge his full 
duty to the public day by day. ''Eternal vigilance is 
the price of liberty." Freedom must be perpetually 
won or it must be lost. 

Comrades and Fellow Citizens, what I have said is 
not new or strange to you. These thoughts are your 
thoughts. I have deemed it my duty to remind you 
on this occasion of some of our civic conditions, to 
the end that we may be moved to greater vigilance in 
the discharge of our civic duties. 

Before resuming my seat, permit me in a few 
words to call your attention to this Memorial Hall, 
and the organization under which these exercises are 



11 



being held, and to indicate to you the work that is 
being done here and the character of the work. 

In the first place, the organizations that have met 
in this hall during the past year are five Grand Army 
Posts and seven or eight Camps of the Sons of Vet- 
erans, or the United States War Veterans, with a 
total attendance of upwards of 9,600 people. Other 
organizations have met here w^ith an attendance of 
upwards of 4,000 people. General visitors in this hall 
and museum have numbered upwards of 125,000 dur- 
ing the year. With these visitors thus we have an 
attendance here annually of about 139,000 people. 
Among the visitors who have visited the hall and the 
museum are classes and departments of the following 
schools: Scanlan, Anderson, Fuller, Sullivan, 
Holden, Earle, Englewood High School, Carter, Ray, 
Pullman, St. jMichaels, Goethe, Morse, and library 
students. 

If, friends, you could be bystanders, quiet bystand- 
ers, when these school children assemble in this hall 
and in the museum, and observe the very great in- 
terest and avidity with which they view the relics of 
the war, you would be gratified to know that in these 
children who a few years hence will be exercising 
the rights of citizenship, is an eager class of students, 
desirous of know^ing the history of their country. 
This exhibit enables these young people to visualize 
and make definite that which they have read in their 
histories. The influence for good citizenship, for the 
upbuilding of patriotism, which this organization, 
through the means of this hall, exerts upon this large 
body of people every year, can hardly be measured. 

I mention these facts to you in closing, so that you 
may know what this organization is doing, the kind 

12 



of work that it is doing, and to say to you that it 
needs your sympathy and your help. (Applause.) 

THE CHAIRMAN: A young man of this city 
recently said to one of our prominent citizens, a big 
doer of good deeds, that the church had lost its use- 
fulness. If this be true, we have indeed fallen upon 
grievous times. But we of the Memorial Hall Asso- 
ciation believe that that is not true. We believe that 
the church is stronger and better today than ever be- 
fore. The church is the best ally of the Grand Army 
of the Republic. If the church at any time becomes 
an impotent power, an impotent factor in the force 
of this country, then a body blow will be struck at 
patriotism, the cardinal principle of the Grand Army 
of the Republic. 

The church teaches morality and right living. The 
Cirand Army of the Republic teaches patriotism and 
right living, and the two go hand in hand, and are the 
bulwark and the safeguard of this mighty republic. 

One of the most notable exponents of our faith is 
the Reverend Herman Page, whom I now have the 
pleasure of introducing to you. Dr. Page. 



13 



LI 



LiBRfiRV OF CONGRESS 



012 025 908 8 



